1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an apparatus and method for providing additional information of media content, by which characteristic features of media content can be maximally represented by setting additional information related to the media content to be displayed at a time desired by a user.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a contents system displays media content transmitted from broadcasting stations or contents providing servers on a screen when selected by a user. Along with the development of multimedia technology, the transition from analog contents systems to digital contents systems is currently ongoing.
Recent advances in ultrahigh-speed Internet technology have led to a tremendous growth of digital contents industry in various fields, such as movies, games, music, or e-books. The 21st century is an era that sees the dominance of the IT software industry including contents over the hardware industry and will promisingly be a wealth-creating era. Such digital contents industry collectively refers to the industry associated with production, processing, protection, distribution and servicing of information via communication networks, digital broadcasting networks, and digital storage media. If the ultrahigh-speed Internet infrastructure of Korea is tied up with its advanced contents producibility in various fields, the nation's IT industry will develop to a higher level and the thus produced contents will become the nation's higher value-added exports.
In particular, with the rapid development of multimedia signal processing and transmission technologies and the emergence of new mobile TV services, such as Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld (DVD-H) or Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB), the popularity of viewing video through small-sized LCD panels is gradually growing in Korea.
In such digital content systems, a large-capacity media program can be stored in a hard disc and can be played back and viewed at any time when a user desires to view the program.
Media provide means by which information is stored, and there are a variety of types of media, including a flash memory, a hard disc drive (HDD), a compact disc (CD), a compact disc rewritable (CD-RW), and so on, according to the kind of media player used. With the advent of a multimedia age, the media have come to provide diversified contents.
In the prior art, however, additional information related to the content stored in the media is merely simple information, such as track information regarding the content currently being played back or playback time information. Furthermore, the prior art media still cannot be used for file searching or navigation.
Accordingly, what is needed is technology of utilizing additional information related to content in various ways, for example, compiling or searching for the additional information, at a time desired by a user.